find text in xml using xpath

[K Srinivasan]

hi,
i am new to xpath.
can i find if there exists text in an xml using xpath
for eg
a xml should be
<a>
<b>abc</b>
<c>def</c>
</a>

i want to find if there is sometext outside the tags
like
<a>asdfsaf
<b>abc</b>
<c>def</c>
</a>

[William Brogden]

Seems to me you could evaluate to get a NodeList, then iterate through the NodeList - you will see Text nodes for both the printing characters "asdfsaf" in your example, and the non printing formatting line feeds, spaces, tabs, etc.

Bill

[Paul Clapham]

So you want to identify text nodes which are children of the <a> element? (Not ancestors, but children.) And these have to be text nodes which aren't all whitespace?

The first part should be easy -- you were on the wrong track thinking of "tags", whereas when you pose the question in terms of nodes in the XML tree it becomes much more transparent. The "not whitespace" part -- I believe there's an XPath function which normalizes text. So start from there and let us know if you still have problems.

[K Srinivasan]

thanks for the reply..
but couldnt' understand much...guess i need to study xpath a little more,before attempting....

from the first reply i could understand that i'll get a nodelist which will have all the nodes
that is
<a>
asdfsaf
<b>
abc
<c>
def

but how do i get the tag asdfsaf from that ??

[K Srinivasan]

hi , i tried this...

if(nodes.item(i).getNodeType() ==Node.TEXT_NODE)
{//do something}

but in my case it returns

asdfsaf

abc

def

how do i seperate out "asdfsaf" from the other text nodes which can be there ??

thanks

[K Srinivasan]

hi , i tried this...

if(nodes.item(i).getNodeType() ==Node.TEXT_NODE)
{//do something}

but in my case it returns

asdfsaf

abc

def

how do i seperate out "asdfsaf" from the other text nodes which can be there ??

thanks

[K Srinivasan]

well i tried this :

for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
 if(nodes.item(i).getNodeType() ==Node.TEXT_NODE)
  {
  // do something..
  }
}

this returns all the text nodes..

asdfsaf

abc

def

how do i seperate out asdfsaf from the other text nodes which are valid..(all i am trying to do is findout if there are any extra text nodes other than those which are allowed)
thanks.

[William Brogden]

Check the name of the parent element for each TEXT node first.

You really need to get very very familiar with the methods in org.w3c.dom.Node - see the JavaDocs - there is a very useful table giving the kinds of Nodes..

Bill

[K Srinivasan]

hi william..
thanks..finally figured that out...
now stuck on how to remove the whitespaces which creep in as text nodes...

any clues would be appreciated

thanks ....